Just kidding. Everything's wonky.

Category Archives: Stash

So, life has a way of happening. I now have four children. Baby Four was born recently. The pregnancy was rough (though normal). Having an infant is actually easier in a lot of ways.

I just got my “sewjo” back and signed up for Monday Open Sew at the local quilting shop. I figured that I wouldn’t stay for the whole thing, but I wanted to talk to adults other than my husband, and I really wanted to produce something again (other than a baby). I hadn’t worked on anything in a year and really didn’t want to schlep my sewing machine and/or rulers and cutting mats along with the baby, so I just brought a box of fabric scraps and EPP supplies.

The fabric I’ve been putting off using for years is a 8″x8″ test swatch of tiny molting grackles by meduzy on Spoonflower. I decided to just use some 2″ and 4″ square papers and just cut into the thing already. The photo above is most of what I got done at the Open Sew.

I don’t know where I’m going with it. It might end up being a little wall hanging or a pillow or part of something bigger. I wish the designer on Spoonflower had more animals in the same style and color scheme, but she really doesn’t, aside from a mouse. I’d rather leave it at just the grackle.

When I got home and got Baby Four (we’ll call her “Qua”) to nap, I cut out some more papers and ended up with the scheme above, which is a five-inch block. The center square is 1/2″ on a side. I plan to have not many that small. I was actually trying for bigger pieces, but I guess that’s hard for me. Part of it was dictated by the fabric, though.

The layout above is very, very tentative. I ordered more of the grackle fabric and I’ll see what I can do when it gets here. I’m trying to only add bigger pieces than what I have here. 1/2″ is too small for a rectangle, though it’s not bad for hexes. The top 2″ grackle rectangles are framed out to 4″. I’m not sure how it’ll all fit together yet. I’m calling it “Molting Grackles” for now.

Feast your eyes on the fabric I pulled for this project. It’s mostly scraps, with a few fat quarters for good measure. We’ll see if I end up using it all and/or if I have to add to it. Both seem likely. It’s looking very red/cream/blue muted oldstyle. I truly thought I was more modern than that. Maybe not when I’m EPPing.

I went back and finally finished the gluing and cutting and basting of this charm pack that Prim LOVED. Picture time:

You’ll see that I didn’t learn anything from last time: This “black” construction paper is a terrible background, so none of the colors are true. It’s worse in the 1/2″ hexagon picture:

My favorite has to be that tree in the upper right, which is unfortunately upside down in the picture. My least favorite is the guy’s torso in the middle of the shot. These prints didn’t work at all well for the 1/2″ hexagons, both since the patterns were too big and because they had too many colors in them to work with my I’m Not a Machine project. Ah, well. Live and learn. Prim LOVES them.

Not pictured are the leftover 5″ x (mostly) 2.5″ strips which will eventually go into a scrappy coin quilt. This charm pack was tied with a ribbon which went missing well before I had everything basted, let alone ready for their photos.

Did I mention that Prim LOVES this Pepe in Paris fabric? (Yes, you did, HP, a bunch of times now.) Well, I got a yard each of the main print in pink and blue (I couldn’t find the white–my “local retailer” was all sold out, ages ago) for pillowcases. He’s very excited about the idea. I like this tutorial at Film in the Fridge for making fancy pillowcases with cuffs and NO RAW SEAMS!

I want to get started on them, but I need to finish a few other projects first, so they’ll have to wait a bit.

I got a little frustrated with mini charm (2.5″ squares) packs because the large patterns in a collection tend to be lost even on a 1″ hexagon while still not giving me much variety for my 1/2″ hexagons. On the plus side, they’re cheap and even more so with my subscription to Fat Quarter Shop’s Moda Mini Charm Pack Club. (And I got a bunch of them during a very good sale.)

So I decided to try a charm (5″ squares) pack. This is Basics Lucky from Cotton and Steel. It’s a short stack (only seven designs), and the price was right when I came across it in my local quilt shop.

I realized that I could use those leftover 5″ by 2″ to 2.5″ (depending on how precisely I cut around the hexagons) rectangles for SCRAPPY COIN QUILTS! Duh! l love it!

It’s a little more work to cut up a charm pack like this, vs the mini charms where I only had to trim the corners off the fabric I lightly glued to the 1″ hexagons before I thread basted them. Cutting around the 1/2″ hexagons is a bear either way.

It wasn’t too bad, but I’m still thinking about a die cutter if I’m going to make this a habit.

I also learned that “black” construction paper isn’t really black and it’s very spotty and needs lots of evening out in Photoshop.

The 1/2″ hexagons are destined for my ongoing rainbow project “I’m Not a Machine“. The ones that don’t fit into the color scheme (and duplicates of the ones that do) are going to become some general, scrappy projects, likely small ones, along the lines of notebook covers or doll quilts.

But I didn’t have a plan for the 1” hexagons. I was worried that the fabrics from the different lines wouldn’t play well together and I didn’t have enough of any one to make a sizable project. My sewing relative (SR) said that they’d look fine together and that the more different fabric packs I used, the better they’d all blend.

She was totally right. Even without mixing up the different fabric lines, they look good together, though the one on the right will look best mixed in.

This simplifies my storage and construction options considerably. I’ve decided that after I’ve taken a picture of the basted 1″ hexagons from a particular pack, I’ll store them all in a bin together.

The bin’s pretty tall, so I can shake it around before I pick out individual hexagons to add to a project. What am I going to make?

Pillow covers for the couch! We’re using pillowcases now, which are easy to clean when the kids get stuff on them, but they’re ugly and it’s like we’re living in a frat house. The pillows are 16″ squares, so I’ll need about a hundred to cover each pillow. (CD Designs has a pretty good tool for figuring out how many of whatever-sized hexagon you’ll need to fill a specific space.) The backs will be solid (for napping), and I’ll use an invisible zipper to close. I’m going to machine quilt these babies, too.

I’d like to have a lot more hexagons in the bin before I finish a pillow, but I might pull some out soon and start sewing them together. I also need to look at my scraps and see what I can fussy-cut for interest.

Very few of the fabrics I got are a pure grey. The one in the upper right is greenish and the ones in the middle on the bottom look beige (worse in the picture than in life), but that’s better than the blue-greys on the top.

If I want to work with close solids like this in the future, I think I’ll need to pick a fabric line and invest in a color card. Fabric selection’s been way more difficult than it should have been.

I also have one more color of pearl cotton coming. I hope it’s more of a true grey than the blue-grey balls up top.

And the prints I got are still sitting in my sewing room, calling me. I’m agonizing too much about this quilt and I haven’t even started yet.

A not-great picture of another mini charm pack basted onto 1/2″ and 1″ hexagons. This one is From Outside In for Moda. Only three repeated fabrics(!), which is great if you were sewing something big with the collection, but my focus is on the 1/2″ hexagons more than the 1″ hexagons. As a matter of fact, I did the 1/2″ hexagons first and debated even doing the 1″ hexagons at all.

I like the solids in the pack and I do like the “matchstick” repeated patterns which ended up on the 1/2″ hexagons, but this basting and photographing is starting to feel like work. I need to decide on what I’m going to make with the 1″ hexagons before I do any more of them.

I LOVE blue, and many of the scraps that I bought from eBay are blue, but I don’t think I have many of the right color. I went through them and found some, but not many. I don’t want to cut into the blues I have for my wonky blue/purple/green quilt since it’s not anywhere near done yet.

This picture isn’t exactly true to color, but you can see that most of the ones I pulled out are too greenish/turquoise (on the upper right). The ones on the upper left are too grey, even the ones with gold and silver. The bottom ones are mostly just wrong in various ways.

The only two I think are actually BLUE blue are the polka dot in the top row and the trains on the lower right. Sadly, the trains are really a short little strip and I’d like to fussy cut some of the train cars out of it, leaving me with very little.

<sigh>

Hmm. Maybe if I go into my project box only for little bits that I’ve already cut and use them for 1/2″ hexagons, it’ll be okay. I’ll have to think about it (and look in that project box and see if I kept any tiny scraps from the work I did on it already).

I know I’ve been saying I love every mini charm pack I baste to hexagons, but I take it all back. THIS is my favorite one so far. Look at the 1″ hexagons all stacked up:

How could you not love that? And the repeated fabrics are bright and cheery and, more importantly, are tone-on-tone colors and so should fit easily into my ongoing 1/2″ hexagon project, I’m Not a Machine. Go a load of this gorgeous rainbow of pattern:

And here they are basted onto 1/2″ hexagons, two from each 2.5″ square, in a shadowy nighttime picture:

That patterns look good big. The patterns look good small. Who could ask for anything more?

I wasn’t going to buy any fabric this holiday season (ha), but Fat Quarter Shop had an Uh-Maz-Ing Black Friday sale.

I got a book, three charm packs (5″ squares) and two mini charm packs (2.5″ squares) for TEN DOLLARS (plus $2 in shipping). Two of those charm packs aren’t by Moda (Pepe in Paris for Riley Blake Designs and Rosewater for Free Spirit Fabrics), which I’ve been meaning to try out.